He is to swear in Medina beside the pulpit, and in Mecca between the Corner and the Station. Likewise, in every other town, according to him, the oath is taken at the pulpit, and the financial threshold that triggers this intensification is twenty dinars.

Dāwūd maintains that the pulpit must be used whether the sum in dispute is small or large.

Abū Ḥanīfah, however, holds that the solemnity of an oath is not heightened by location at all.

The root of the disagreement is whether the stern warning concerning an oath taken on the Prophet’s pulpit—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—implies that an oath must be sworn on the pulpit. Those who answer in the affirmative argue that, were such an obligation not intended, the warning would have no meaning. Those who deny the obligation say that the warning serves a purpose other than making the pulpit oath compulsory, and therefore the oath need not be taken there.

The ḥadīth invoked in this regard is the report of Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī, in which the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—said:

“Whoever swears falsely upon my pulpit has taken his seat in the Fire.”

Proponents also cite actual practice, saying: it was the custom of the caliphs. Al-Shāfiʿī comments: this practice has never ceased in Medina and Mecca.

They add: If the stern wording did not convey an obligation to take the oath in the specified place, its only effect would be to dissuade people from swearing there, which makes little sense. Moreover, just as the generic warning about false oaths—such as his statement, peace and blessings be upon him, “Whoever seizes the right of a Muslim through his oath, Allah will forbid Paradise to him and make Hell obligatory for him”—is understood to ground judicial decisions on oaths, so too the location-specific warning indicates that the oath must be taken there.

The opposing side responds that a stern warning attached to an oath does not in itself entail that judgments rest upon oaths; by the same token, the warning linked to place does not entail that the oath must be taken in that place. There is, they add, no consensus of the Companions on the matter; the disagreement is evident from the case judged by Zayd ibn Thābit.

According to Mālik, an oath is intensified by place in cases of qasāmah and liʿān, and by time as well: in liʿān he stipulates that it occur after the ʿAṣr prayer, following the warning issued regarding those who swear after that time.

As for rendering judgment on the basis of an oath supported by a single witness, the jurists disagreed. Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, Dāwūd, Abū Thawr, the seven Madinan jurists, and a number of others maintain that judgment may be rendered